27 
American Agriculturist, January 12, 1924 
Alfalfa Forges Ahead 
See What Your County Has Done in Ten Years 
N O single crop has made a greater advance 
in the last ten years, in amount of acreage 
planted and in the good graces of every farmer 
who has used it than has alfalfa. But as soon 
as I mention the word, I can see many of you 
Vive a disgusted snort and turn away to some 
other part of the paper. But listen just a minute. 
In 1909 there were only about 35,000 acres 
of alfalfa, in New York State. In 1919, the 
total acreage was very nearly 120,000. Similar 
increases have been made in other States. I 
ha ve asked the editor to include on this page, 
a tabulation of the acreage in each New York 
county in 1909 and in 1919. These tremendous 
increases and the fact that alfalfa is grown in 
every farm county in New York States leads 
me to the statement that in spite of the failures, 
there is not a county which cannot grow this 
great legume successfully. In fact, I have seen 
it growing myself on hundreds of farms under 
conditions that we have been told time and 
time again were not right for alfalfa. 
Good Seed a Secret 
Incidentally, I believe that one of the great 
secrets is good seed, and perhaps this means 
the Grimm variety. Certainly it means a 
variety that will stand our northern winters. 
No southern-grown seed can do this. With the 
right seed and a soil that is either naturally 
sweet or that has been artificially made so 
with plenty of lime, and with proper inocula¬ 
tion, alfalfa will grow on almost any soil and 
under almost any conditions. 
So much for the growing. What about its 
worth? The best way to answer this question 
is to get a little and feed it to your dairy cattle 
there. And it took less than three-quarters of a 
century to deplete the fertility of that soil 
after the timber had been cleared away, and 
it had been submitted to a cultivation that 
knew nothing of soil conservation. 
So when I bought my wornout farm it was 
called the poqrest farm in the county, and I was 
considered^ poor business man for making so 
foolish a purchase. 
I had been told by my neighbors that under 
no circumstances must I plow the sandy soil 
of that farm over four inches deep or I would 
kill it, and it would never produce anything 
thereafter. It was my thought, however, that 
it seemed to be already dead, so I couldn’t 
make matters much worse by plowing it deeper. 
And so my neighbors said there was no hope 
for me when I set my plows to plowing it nine 
inches deep. 
“He Who Laughs Last ...” 
I planted alfalfa upon it and it failed and 
my neighbors said, “I told you so.” Then I 
got mad and began to us my brains, and saw 
that the soil lacked about all the elements 
necessary to make alfalfa grow. There was 
nothing in it for soil bacteria to feed upon, it 
was merely a soil skeleton. And I had done 
nothing to make it possible for alfalfa bacteria 
to grow. So I planted green manuring crops 
upon that sandy soil and plowed them under 
deep the next season, inoculated my alfalfa 
seed, and sowed it in the fall and grew alfalfa 
upon my sand-hills, twenty or more feet deep 
of yellow sand, that made six tons to the acre 
at three cuttings. And the alfalfa roots went 
down into those sand-hills deep enough to get 
Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres 
COUNTY 
in 
Alfalfa 
in 
Alfalfa 
COUNTY 
in 
Alfalfa 
in 
Alfalfa 
COUNTY 
in 
Alfalfa 
ill 
Alfalfa 
COUNTY Alf i : if a Al fd fa 
1909 
145 
1919 
1124 
Essex. 
1909 
59 
1919 
380 
Niagara. . . 
1909 
. 195 
1919 
570 
Schoharie.. . . 
1909 
267 
1359 
Allegany. . . 
. 421 
G04 
Franklin.. . 
4 
39 
Oneida. . . . 
1913 
4913 
Schuyler. 
88 
287 
30 
163 
Fulton. . .. 
.12 
63 
Onondaga. . 
.13486 
33222 
Seneca . 
317 
1345 
. no 
392 
Genesee. . . 
.. 1283 
5080 
Ontario. . . 
. 1442 
7537 
Steuben . 
230 
618 
Cayuga. . . . 
. 2371 
10007 
Greene.... 
83 
433 
Orange.. . . 
. -224 
1834 
Suffolk. 
109 
345 
141 
377 
Hamilton.. 
0 
11 
Orleans. . . . 
. 329 
1307 
Sullivan. 
31 
60 
Chemung.. . 
. 83 
156 
Herkimer.. 
. . 244 
1192 
Oswego . . . . 
69 
222 
Tioga. 
4 1 
63 
Chenango. . 
65 
157 
Jefferson. . 
120 
472 
Otsego.... 
. 175 
633 
Tompkins. . . 
Ulster....... 
265 
98 
862 
485 
Clinton. 
33 
336 
Lewis. 
55 
201 
Putnam. . . 
22 
131 
12 
22 
Columbia.. . 
45 
305 
Livingston. 
.. 1306 
5418 
Rensselear.. 
14 
151 
Washington.. 
49 
632 
Cortland. . . 
. 152 
654 
Madison.. . 
. . 5359 
19580 
Rockland.. 
10 
66 
Wavne. 
803 
3823 
Delaware. . 
39 
45 
Monroe. . 
.. 1270 
5421 
St. Lawrence . 22 
217 
Westchester.. 
11 
151 
Dutchess. .. 
. 217 
957 
Montgomery. 210 
1476 
Saratoga. . 
19 
111 
Wyoming.. . . 
560 
1138 
Erie. 
. 259 
1139 
Nassau.. . . 
81 
147 
Schenectadj 
3 
52 
Yates . 
345 
1372, 
for a while, and see the milk jump, and on less 
grain, too. In addition, every acre used for 
alfalfa is getting better every n»inute because 
of its nitrogen-fixing properties. More and 
more farmers are coming to recognize that 
good legumes are fundamental to good dairy¬ 
ing, and alfalfa is the best legume. 
Our grandfathers knew all about this legume 
business in the early days when red clover 
grew without any coaxing on nearly all of our 
lands. They got the milk, and plenty of it, 
out of the old scrub cows and without any 
grain feeding. The chief reason was the great 
mows of clover hay. 
This very day I was talking to a farmer who 
was saying how alfalfa had solved his labor 
problem. It seems that for several years he 
has been gradually getting all of his meadow 
land into alfalfa. For the season of 1924, he 
has rented all of his farm except his residence, 
his barn and his pastures. The renter is to cut 
the alfalfa hay on shares. All the owner will 
do is to milk and care for his cows. He will 
cease to worry about the farm itself or about 
what he is going to feed his cows for the 
coming year. The alfalfa will feed his cows, 
enrich his soil and the other fellow will do the 
labor of harvesting it. 
Of course, this is rather an extreme case, 
and not practical everywhere, and of course it 
took this man a long time to get in this ideal 
situation. But this and similar experiences 
and the rapid increase in acreage do give us 
Eastern dairy farmers something to think 
about in the possibilities of alfalfa. 
—E. E. Roe, New York. 
GROWING ALFALFA ON SAND 
William C. Smith 
I N 1906 I bought a farm located in a valley 
that ages ago was the bed of a great river. 
There is every evidence that at one time the 
river covered the entire valley bounded on two 
sides by high hills that are separated from one 
to two miles apart. 
My farm was located upon a series of un¬ 
dulated . hills of deep yellow sand which 
centuries ago had been washed there by that 
mighty river. After the waters had subsided it 
took other centuries for old Nature to cover 
those hills with a fertile soil, and a heavy growth 
of large timber, which the early pioneers found 
thd moisture necessary to keep the plants 
growing nice and green during the driest 
seasons when all other grasses were brown and 
sear. And the growing of alfalfa upon those 
sand-hills for several years so restored the 
fertility of the soil that I grew paying crops of 
corn, potatoes, and my sandy lands became as 
good producing lands as any on the farm. 
PLANS COMBINED ICE-HOUSE 
AND DAM 
I have been planning to build an ice-dam and ice-house 
together. What do you think of my plan? I was going to 
make the breast of the concrete dam do for the front wall 
of the ice-house.—G. G., Pa. 
W E do not recall ever having seen a struc¬ 
ture of this type. Without going into 
very great detail, it does not seem advisable to 
follow such a plan. The objection is that if 
high water should damage the dam, the ice¬ 
house would be sure to suffer damage at the 
same time. As far as keeping the ice in such a 
house is concerned, we are of the opinion that a 
considerable loss would be suffered, due to the 
fact that water takes up a large amount of heat, 
when the temperature is raised but slightly, 
but gives up large quantities of heat at cooling. 
It looks to us that unless the wall of the dam 
were built very thick and special precaution 
taken to insulate it, that the warm water in the 
ice-pond during the summer would tend to 
thaw the ice in the house a great deal faster 
than would the air in contact with the wall on 
the well-built ice-house. It may be that you 
are planning to dam up a very small stream 
and leave a sluice gate which would remain open 
during the summer draining the pond. This 
would eliminate the temperature and melting 
factors.—F. G. B. 
COMING FARMERS’ 
MEETINGS 
January 15-18—Annual Meeting N. A . State 
Horticultural Soc.. Roch¬ 
ester, N. Y. 
February 11-16—Farmers Week at Cornell, 
Ithaca, N. Y. 
March 4-5 —Annual Meeting N. Y. State 
Vegetable Growers Assn., 
Syracuse, N. Y. 
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